At the beginning of Best of Both Worlds, an away team beams down to the New Providence colony and is surprised to find that it is not there. The colony has been removed from the surface in a manner similar to what happened to the Federation and Romulan outposts in The Neutral Zone as well as the cities in System J25 in Q Who.

In their earliest encounters with the Borg, the Enterprise was able to see that the outposts and cities were not there from orbit with no mention made of away teams.

So why did they have to beam down to New Providence to see that the colony was gone? Couldn't they have seen it (or not seen it) on sensors?

Note: I'm only asking about the away team at the beginning of the episode. I understand why the subsequent away team beamed down to investigate whether or not it was actually the Borg.

Presumably at the same time the team are beaming down there are other teams trying to use visual sensors to look at the surface of the planet from orbit. It's very possible that the ship has arrived at an oblique angle (with the colony below the horizon or behind one of the mountain ranges that seem to ring it) or even just that it's not possible to see through the extensive cloud cover that we see in the opening shot.